Heart of a Madman
by Bleak December
Summary: A series of one-shots about a romantic relationship with Murdock. Each chapter is a random scene...not necessarily in chronological order. There really is someone for everyone.
1. Shut Up!

I have finally given into temptation and decided to write about my newest obsession: James "Howling Mad" Murdock from the A-Team. I saw the movie, and instantly fell in love with the clinically-insane pilot. So, I've decided to write a series of drabbles/one-shots that detail random scenes from a romantic relationship with him. The OC is a shameless author-insert. Just wanted to get that out in the open before anyone accused me of it.

I should also mention that all of these are not in chronological order. For instance, this particular one-shot is just after Allison (the OC/me) openly expresses her affection for Murdock. I wouldn't call them an official 'couple' just yet...because honestly - how do you have "the Talk" with crazy H.M.? A relationship with a crazy man just sort of...happens.

And just so there's less confusion, Allison joined their team a while ago. She's an American with duel citizenship with Israel, and served in the IDF as a sniper and Mossad member until her father became ill (who lived in the US). She moved back to America, where she then joined up with the A-Team fugitives under very exciting, highly creative, and up-until-now still un-thought-up circumstances. I'm sure I'll think of something. Eventually...maybe.

In the mean time, please enjoy!

**"Shut Up!"**

Hannibal looked like a father patiently putting up with his son's tantrum, sitting in the armchair with his newspaper taught between his clenched hands...he had yet to turn a page.

Face looked distinctly irritated in the kitchen, making lunch. It was clear from his body language that he would much rather be stabbing a particular someone with his knife, rather than chopping the celery stalk on his cutting board.

B.A. looked positively murderous, sitting on the couch watching an NBA game on TV...or _trying _to, at least. By the rhythmic wringing of his fists and the withering glares he shot at a particular someone (glares that Allison had dubbed 'death rays'), it was clear that if it didn't stop soon, he would be guilty of manslaughter.

Allison's left eye twitched periodically as she sat at the table next to a particular someone, doing her best to concentrate on the cryptoquip puzzle before her and ignore the fact that her grip on the pen was making her fingers turn white.

Said particular person was unsurprisingly and blissfully unaware of the effect he was having on his companions. James Murdock was, although a brilliant pilot and valued asset to the A-Team, not the most observant of people. He had a tendency to become lost in his own thoughts, or absorbed in a menial activity. And right now, that menial activity was driving everybody in the apartment up the walls.

Murdock had been assigned the tedious task of forging everyone some new social security cards...a painstaking process that ate up a lot of time, but didn't provide any actual challenge. To occupy his brain while doing so, James had started singing to himself. This, in and of itself, was not the issue (although Allison was positive BA would beg to differ and insist that it was equally the issue). It was, in fact, the choice of song. And how long he'd been singing it.

This song happened to be "The Song That Never Ends," and he'd been singing it for a good thirty minutes, only pausing momentarily to breathe, and there was no end in sight.

The first two minutes had been relatively harmless...Allison had even whistled along to the tune for the first 30 seconds or so.

Between five and ten minutes, it had become a background noise that most of the team had been able to ignore or tune out entirely.

By twenty minutes, everyone's ears had grown tired of actively tuning him out, and each member covertly shot glances at the others, gauging how well the others were handling the irritation. Although each person was growing steadily more aggravated, no one made eye-contact with anyone else, so they did nothing, not wanting to make a scene...at least single-handedly.

But now, after thirty minutes of the blasted children's song being sung on endless repeat, tempers and nerves were at their breaking point.

Face faked a loud cough from the kitchen.

No response. Not even an indication Murdock had heard him.

Hannibal purposefully shook his newspaper and turned a page noisily, looking over with barely-concealed agitation.

Not even a twitch from the madman.

BA let out a deep, rumbling growel, reminding everyone in the apartment (pilot excluded) of the predator he was.

Once again, no change.

"Murdock!" Allison barked, slamming her pen down on the table in frustration.

The man jumped visibly in his chair and jerked his head up, eyes wide in surprise. "Baby, you scared the daylights outta me!" He started rambling as soon as he caught his breath. "Donchya know I'm workin' on a terribly important secret assignment? Why, forgery's a careful art and requires the utmost concentration...even the slightest - "

"James!" she interrupted insistently. He paused in his stream-of-conscious chattering just long enough for the sniper to blurt out "Shut up!"

The pilot looked scandalized. "Whatever do you mean, sweet cheeks? I haven't been doin' nothin' this whole time and -"

"You've been singing, hun."

Murdock appeared nonplussed and didn't miss a beat. "Well I need some form of distraction from this mind-numbing tedium, don't I? And I wasn't singing very loudly, was I?"

"Stop talking, love..." she reached over and patted his arm on the table, "You're annoying the crap out of everybody."

James took an indignant sniff, looking around the room at the other members of the team (who were all studiously and seemingly-innocently ignoring the two of them). "Seeing as I didn't even realize I was doing it, it's clear that I have no control over my musicalogical expressionism. It appears you'll just have to find a way to stop me from doing it."

With an exaggerated flourish, he resumed his forging. "_I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves," _he sang with a lopsided smirk at his papers, "_And this is how it gooooooooes...I know a song that get's on everybody's nerves..."_

Allison didn't waist another moment, and scooted herself from her chair and made her way over to stand directly next to Murdock's chair. Sensing a disturbance in the Force, James glanced up at the uninvited company that just welcomed herself into his personal space. He was still singing, but his voice became uncertain when he caught a glance of his girlfriend's determined expression.

"I'll get you to shut up," she murmured as she bent down, locking her lips with those of the startled pilot.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the singing stopped, even if the other team members did feel a little awkward...what with two of their partners making out at the table.

Just when the kiss was on the verge of becoming too heated, they broke apart: Murdock's hair mussed up, his eyes wild, cheeks flushed; and Allison with a smug expression, although a little breathless - much to the pilot's satisfaction.

The girl cocked her head to the side with a smile. "Problem solved." Turning, she headed out of the little breakfast nook to join Face in the kitchen.

BA returned to his basketball game, shaking his head and trying to remove the image of that crazy fool being snogged out of his brain.

Hannibal fluffed up his newspaper again, finding the place he'd left off and letting out a sigh of relief. There really _was _someone for everyone, he thought with a smile.

Face resumed chopping the celery for their chicken salad lunch, though now his rhythm was much less stilted and forceful. He privately marveled (not without a little jealousy, but definitely not begrudgingly), how a girl that beautiful and rational could not only handle Murdock, but actually enjoy it.

For his own part, Murdock sat a little shell-shocked in his chair. He hadn't moved much or changed his look of enraptured disbelief since Allison had left him there. But eventually, he began to snap out of his daze, and he slowly went back to his forging, starting to hum as he did.

Very soon, however, the humming turned into lyrics.

_"I know we don't belong _  
><em>Everyone says it's wrong <em>  
><em>We come from different ways <em>  
><em>So I tried to erase everything that I felt..."<em>

"Yo fool!" BA called out from his couch, "Cut that shit out already!" But Murdock was worlds away from them at that point, lost in his own mind and continuing to sing the Karmina song to himself, unaware he was even voicing it - let alone that the entire A-Team was listening.

"_But then you kissed me and suddenly I don't care any more _  
><em>Something in me tells me you're the one I'm looking for <em>  
><em>But then you kissed me and suddenly I don't care any more <em>  
><em>Something in me tells me you're the one I'm looking for <em>  
><em>From the kiss<em>  
><em>From the kiss..."<em>

"You crazy ass fool! Shut the hell up! I'm tryin' to watch the game here!"

Hannibal raised a silencing hand to BA with patience and understanding. "Let him be, Bosco. Let him be."

The big man growled again, but obeying the team leader and turning back to the television set, grabbing the remote and cranking the volume up to try and drown out the singing.

_"My heart is getting loud _  
><em>I'm trying to keep it down <em>  
><em>I wish the world could hear <em>  
><em>But I can't help but fear that they'll take you away <em>  
><em>You away..."<em>

Allison remained standing in the kitchen with her back to the man singing where she had walked, making to move to start pulling out the slices of bread from the bag she'd grabbed moments earlier. She did not turn around, and ignored Face's gaze, which she could feel boring into the back of her head.

"Looks like that merely created a _new _problem to solve," Face commented.

She said nothing.

_"But then you kissed me and suddenly I don't care any more..."_


	2. The Beginning, Pt 1

She knew she'd run into them eventually.

Well okay, she didn't _know,_ per say, but she just had one of those feelings ever since she first saw them on the news. She'd followed their story ever since they'd become wanted by the government. But that wasn't to say she hadn't known of them before. The A-Team was well-known all throughout the special forces world. It was only a matter of time before she stumbled across them...or rather, before they stumbled across _her._

Allison Westcott was displaced. She attributed her insatiable need for stability to this. It should have come to no surprise to her, having lived and served two separate nations in her short life. A US citizen by birth, her parents divorced when she was 13 and she moved to Israel with her mother. She finished high school in Tel Aviv, and due to her mother's Jewish heritage, received citizenship from the Right of Return law that governs the tiny country.

Unfortunately, with Israeli citizenship came conscription, or the draft. But that wasn't a big issue for Alley, who had looked toward military service as an opportunity to find herself and see what she was made of. She was approached by military intelligence and the Mossad initially, due to her dual citizenship and fluent English, to "work" in the United States. The IDF wanted her to be stationed in D.C. as a military attache. Fancy talk for spy, but less obvious than straight up Mossad agent.

Despite having grown attached to Israel, Allison refused to betray her homeland, and rejected both offers. Her superiors were dismayed, and tried to use this refusal as evidence for disloyalty to Israel. Upon completion of basic training, she was assigned to be a yeoman...or a secretary.

She was outraged at being tossed aside and distrusted. Through sheer force of will (and incessant nagging that would have done any Jewish mother proud), she not only nabbed a dangerous, infantry combatant role (the IDF being the world's only military to allow women to serve as combatants), but also managed to manipulate the brass into granting her a coveted spot in the elite sniper school.

Two years later, as her enlistment was coming to a close, Allison had a falling out with her mother. She wanted to reenlist, but her mother would hear nothing of it. After a four month impasse, and several emotional scenes, she decided to make the move to America in order to live with her father, who she'd only visited twice in her life.

He was the apathetic type, who feigned interest in his only daughter. But after a year living with him, Alley was festering with boredom. Determined to do something useful, she pursued the only career she knew best.

It was surprisingly easy to enlist in the United States Navy, as she had expected a fuss over her dual citizenship. She would never be granted a job with access to secret intelligence, but she didn't mind. What she minded the most was the lack of excitement and danger in her job. The American military was very strict when it came to females on the front lines, and it really cheesed her.

Only six months after enlisting, Allison found herself deployed to an Arleigh-Burke class DDG destroyer in the Gulf of Aden, returning from a Saudi Arabian port call in the Red Sea. She was technically an MT, or a Missile Technician, doomed to slave away test, maintain, repair, and troubleshoot the missile system on board. But something changed that.

It happened while she was on watch, of course...normally she would be miffed, but at least it was something to break the monotony...but she hadn't been the one to spot them. A boat full of Somalian pirates were approaching the ship at an alarming speed. General quarters were sounded, and everyone rushed to their stations.

But the pirates weren't there to simply attack.

They had hostages.

The few men on the destroyer trained to handle pirates were manning the sides, and every gun on board was aimed at the enemy. Allison grew steadily more impatient with the lack of action from her commanders. This situation was quickly turning into a stale mate, what with the pirates demanding ransom and the Navy refusing to act.

Just as she'd reached the end of her tether, Alley was summoned by the XO personally...not a frequent occurrence for any sailor.

There was a small brief, some solemn words, and a grave responsibility. With eight pirates on the tiny craft and only seven Navy SEALs available, they were in need of one more trained sniper to take all eight out concurrently.

Entrusted with not only the lives of the hostages, but perhaps even those of her shipmates, Allison made her way to the fantail. She was given a USN Mark 12 Mod 0/1 SPR, complete with bipod, and ordered to join the SEAL team lying in the shadows.

She didn't know whether it was a good thing she felt so comfortable and natural setting up her spot and adjusting herself for the shot...like riding a bicycle, she thought wryly.

The SEALs briefed her on the operation, instructing her which of the pirates she was to take out, and the process by which they would all fire at the same time.

Alley got a lock on her target through the scope, and was forced to track him by moving the barrel slightly as he bobbed up and down on the boat. All the snipers had to elevate their chests so their propped-up rifles could fire at a downward angle, being careful not to expose themselves to the enemy.

Once everyone was in position, the SEAL team leader counted down from five...four...three...and on the "T" of "two," all eight rifles fired as one.

Screams were heard from the hostages aboard the small craft as the heads of their captors exploded simultaneously, painting the boat with blood and gore. A rescue team was sent immediately, and the victims were handed over to anther ship in the convoy better suited for carrying passengers.

But it was from that point on that Allison Westcott became a Missile Technician in name only.

For the remainder of her enlistment, she was secretly given assignments by her commanders (often requiring her to travel to places not allowed to be mentioned) that utilized her special training. Anyone who had reason to know of her duplicitous role was sworn to secrecy, and official excuses were provided to everyone else for her frequent, extended absences.

She was quickly transferred to shore duty, so her "periods of leave" would be easier to cover and easier to execute, and she soon found herself living in San Diego. And it was there she ran across the illustrious A-Team.

They happened to be her newest assignment.


End file.
